CDC chief sees urgency to cut COVID rate to avoid flu collision
NEW YORK _ The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that many regions in the U.S. need to drive the rate of COVID-19 cases sharply lower to avert a dangerous convergence of the pandemic with flu season.
CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview Thursday that he's optimistic they'll do so, because newly recorded cases have declined from their recent peak in July and most areas of the U.S. are in a "downward trajectory."
Even so, there's a great distance for most of the country to go to reduce the burden of COVID before flu season arrives. Redfield said states need to have less than 5% of COVID tests return positive _ ideally even lower.
"We'd like to see those prevalence rates down under 3%, 2% of tests positive," he said, noting that the U.S. never brought cases down as dramatically as Europe did.
Seasonal influenza sends hundreds of thousands of Americans to hospitals each year. Health officials fear that a bad flu season could collide with the COVID pandemic, sickening millions with similar symptoms and straining hospitals. But the country has a window in the next few months to avoid that scenario, by driving down coronavirus cases and inoculating more Americans with flu shots.
_Bloomberg News
